Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the importance of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha while we have this precious human rebirth; explains why Buddha can definitely guide you, especially if you go for refuge to Buddha; and reminds us that cherishing others most is the path of the bodhisattva. Read more about his teaching here: https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/if-you-go-for-refuge-to-buddha-buddha-definitely-guides-you/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche discusses the benefits of making offerings to stupas, in particular Boudha Stupa in Nepal. Then, joined by Kopan senior Sangha, Rinpoche leads an offering practice to Boudha Stupa, which with you can follow along. 

Rinpoche also offers commentary on verses from Liberation Upon Hearing: The History of the Great Jarung Kashar Stupa by Padmasambhava on the benefits of making offerings to Boudha Stupa. Read more about his teaching here.

In this new thought transformation teaching video, Lama Zopa Rinpoche offers insight into the nature of depression and provides methods to reduce it. Rinpoche emphasizes that our mistaken view of how the I exists plants the seeds for depression. By looking into how our mind labels things good and bad, when nothing exists from its own side, we can begin to see that there's no basis for depression to arise. Read more about his teaching here.

In this new thought transformation teaching video, Lama Zopa Rinpoche offers insight into the nature of depression and provides methods to reduce it. Rinpoche emphasizes that our mistaken view of how the I exists plants the seeds for depression. By looking into how our mind labels things good and bad, when nothing exists from its own side, we can begin to see that there's no basis for depression to arise. Read more about his teaching here.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues offering teachings specifically intended for ordained Sangha, but everyone is welcome to benefit from Rinpoche's advice. He begins this video teaching, recorded on August 19, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us that we have received this perfect human rebirth with the freedom to practice Dharma qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses. This rebirth is extremely rare and precious. Even having the first freedom of not being born in hell is most precious.

It is important to understand your own samsaric suffering. If you don't, you can’t generate compassion for all sentient beings. You must view being in samsara as being in the center of a fire. You have to feel all of your suffering as unbearable, not as pleasure. From that, great compassion for every sentient being comes. From that, bodhichitta arises—the thought to free all beings from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment. For that, we need omniscience and enlightenment for ourselves. No one achieves enlightenment without saying goodbye to samsara.

This life is amazing, but it can stop at any time. Right now there are numberless beings dying in the mother’s womb, as babies, as children, in middle age, in old age; one's breathing can stop at any time. It is like a bubble in water or lightning in the sky.

Rinpoche then discusses the power of holy objects and the benefits of building statues, stupas, and temples. Often building statues and temples doesn’t make sense to Westerners. They think it is too expensive and a waste of money, Rinpoche explains, because they don’t understand the benefits.

Rinpoche quotes from and gives commentary on Sutra Requested by King Prasenajit.

Referring to the teachings of Pandita Nagkyi Rinchen, Rinpoche says that even the creatures killed under the feet of people building a temple will not fall into the lower realms.

According to the White Lotus Sutra, even looking at a drawing of a buddha when you are angry causes you to gradually see ten million buddhas.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said that the real stupa is the realizations of the path to enlightenment within you. You need to dedicate yourself to actualizing the lamrim. No matter how much practice, prostrations, and mantras you do, the main path is listening, reflecting, and meditating on the lamrim.

You cannot receive the blessings of the buddhas without a guru. The guru is the channel through which the ten-direction buddhas guide you and speak to you. You should serve the guru with the mindfulness that the guru is the channel for all the buddhas. The guru is not just someone who gives you a Dharma education. That is a very ordinary view. Without strong guru devotion, heresy and anger arise in relation to the guru, and you create the heaviest negative karma among the negative karmas. Because the essence is pleasing the guru, you need to concentrate on that in everyday life. By pleasing the guru, negative karmas get burned in one second!

Some people spend their whole lives meditating without an object because they don’t have a correct guru. After some time, your mind becomes dull. In this world it is very difficult to meet a perfect guru. For those that do not have the merit to meet a perfect guru and receive perfect teachings, and who have so much suffering and are going on the wrong path, you can develop compassion for them.

You also cannot achieve enlightenment without bodhichitta. As much as possible, do everything with bodhichitta. Even if you don’t have a realization of bodhichitta, but have a bodhichitta motivation, everything you do becomes a cause for enlightenment. By making requests to your guru with firm devotion, you develop realizations.

In order to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime, you need to practice highest yoga tantra because otherwise you lose the opportunity. Then, to be able to develop compassion, to be able to develop the graduated path to enlightenment, you need to purify the obstacles, obscurations, and negative karma, and collect the necessary conditions and merit.

The essence of the practice is persevering in the higher training of morality. You should take the individual liberation vow as your heart practice. Morality is the heart practice. You cannot practice Dharma separately from keeping your promised morality. You should keep the three vows that you have taken: the individual liberation vow, the bodhisattva vows, and the tantric vows.

Where you go in your future life depends on your present actions. You can tell what types of actions you did in the past by looking at your current life, and where you will go next life depends on today.

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Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching, recorded on August 17, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us that while we are so fortunate to have received this rare and perfect human rebirth, which is qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses, death can happen at any time, even before this teaching ends.

Therefore, the real purpose of life is not just to achieve liberation from samsara for ourselves alone, but to never harm and only benefit all sentient beings by freeing them from the oceans of samsara, the total cessation of the gross and subtle obscurations and the completion of realizations. That means every single one, including every ant and fly, and even those you can’t see with your eyes. As a human, this should be the purpose of life. This should be our attitude all day and night, even if we are enjoying ourselves in a five-star hotel, even if we are in the process of dying—we can enjoy for sentient beings, we can die for sentient beings! To bring every sentient being to enlightenment by oneself alone is the purpose of life, therefore we must achieve a state of omniscience as quickly as possible. Therefore, I’m going to listen to the teachings.

Rinpoche shares that the current incarnation of Domo Geshe Rinpoche is going to be an incredible benefit to the world by helping the teachings spread and last a long time. Rinpoche currently offers help for this young lamas’ yearly expenses.

Rinpoche also shared some stories of Sera Je Khen Rinpoche Lobsang Delek’s life in the Buxa Duar, the camp in India where refugee Tibetan monks lived in the 1960s.

Rinpoche reminds us that these teachings are specifically for the ordained Sangha, to remind them that it is most important to live a life in ordination and that this is not just some hippie trip. However, anyone is welcome to listen and benefit from this advice.

Rinpoche then discusses sections from Garland of Jewel Light by Geshe Tsewang Samdrub. He begins by offering commentary on the four doors for receiving downfalls from breaking vows:

1. A lack of conscientiousness.

2. A lack of respect.

3. Not knowing the vows.

4. Having many delusions.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has emphasized the need to live an ethical life, to be a good human being, Rinpoche says. To do this, you need discipline to practice patience, tolerance, compassion, loving-kindness, and forgiveness for those who harm you, and to immediately apologize when you harm others.

Rinpoche explains the four ways to prevent downfalls, citing Garland of Jewel Light:

1. Continuously possessing conscientiousness.

2. Having great respect for the vows of morality.

3. Knowing the vows.

4. Striving in the remedy to the delusions.

When you do these, the doors to making mistakes and downfalls are closed.

Rinpoche then goes over the benefits of protecting morality, again from Garland of Jewel Light:

1. All your collections of goodness will increase and develop.

2. You will be praised by the buddhas.

3. You will be praised by the devas.

4. You will be praised by your friends.

5. You will be worthy of being praised by even yourself.

6. You will be worthy of being naturally praised.

7. Your reputation will cover all the directions.

8. You will listen to the holy Dharma.

9. You will not forget the holy Dharma you listened to.

10. Your realizations of the paths and bhumis will increase.

11. When you die you will be happy and you will go to a happy transmigration.

12. Day and night you will be happy.

13. You will be protected by the devas.

14. You will be happy in front of holy beings.

15. You won’t be able to be harmed by human beings and non-human beings.

16. You will receive whatever enjoyments you need without effort.

17. Whatever prayers you do will succeed.

The results of living in pure vows are very powerful. "You become Dzambhala!" Rinpoche says. "When other people make offerings to you and respect you, they collect much merits. And then, if you pray for them, your prayers are so powerful that there is success for them. Like that, your pujas and your prayers are very powerful."

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We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching. Links to the transcript, translations, and more:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/being-sangha-is-not-a-trip/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching, recorded on August 14, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us of how fortunate we are to wake up in the morning with a perfect human rebirth that is qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses. The life we have is like a candle flame in the wind or a bubble in the water, and can be stopped at any time by death. Rinpoche references verse 55 from Nagarjuna’s Letter to a Friend.

Last night many people went to bed, thinking they had another day to live, but their body became a corpse instead. However, you were able to wake up. Every day you are able to wake up is a real birthday. If you can recognize impermanence and death, it is like skies of happiness! You didn’t die! You aren’t in hell! You weren’t reborn as a hungry ghost or an animal! You can still use your perfect human rebirth to collect merit and purify negative karma. Even reciting OM MANI PADME HUM without a bodhichitta motivation, you collect more merits than drops of water in the ocean, more than blades of grass growing on the hills.

When your breathing stops it will be difficult for your mind to be happy. Rinpoche quotes a verse from Gungthang Tenpai Dronme’s Verses of Advice for Meditating on Impermanence.

Rinpoche then reminds us of the motivation for listening to these teachings. At this time, while we are still breathing, it is not enough to achieve liberation from samsara for oneself. That alone would be a meaningful life, but it is not sufficient. The main purpose of life is to benefit sentient beings, not harming a single one, and more than that to free them from oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment by oneself alone. To do that, we must achieve full enlightenment. Therefore, with a motivation to accomplish this, we listen to the teachings.

Rinpoche offers advice to the gelongs about what brings happiness according to several verses of the Sutra of Individual Liberation (from sojong). You can hear Rinpoche discuss these verses and his commentary on each starting at 11:50 in the video.

Without morality, Rinpoche stresses, we cannot accomplish our own work, let alone successfully work for others. "Therefore," as noted in the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva by Thogme Sangpo (verse 26cd), "to protect morality without wishing for samsara is a practice of a bodhisattva."

For a bodhisattva, those who offer harm are like a precious treasure (Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva, verse 27ab).

Therefore, cherish evil beings like a precious treasure, as advised in Eight Verses for Training the Mind by Langri Tangpa.

Rinpoche stresses that it is important to understand what this means. People who create harm for others create so much negative karma and have so much suffering. When you see that it is like you have found a precious treasure, a diamond, gold, a sapphire, a wish-granting jewel in the garbage. They are so precious and rare that you must cherish them, like how some cherish money so much! Why? Because by cherishing them you generate strong renunciation of your own samsara and sooo much compassion for them. From that, you generate strong bodhichitta, and from that, quick enlightenment. And with that you can liberate the numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric suffering. A jewel or money doesn’t do that, but this type of person can! So cherish them.

Another verse Rinpoche emphasizes in this teaching and suggests we write down in our prayer books is verse 28 from Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva:

Since even the hearer-listeners and solitary realizers, who achieve only the works for self,

Are seen to make effort, like putting out a fire on the head,

It is a practice of a bodhisattva to make effort to receive all qualities

For the sake of all transmigratory beings.

Write the above verse down so you can learn it, Rinpoche says. Otherwise, your motivation will always be controlled by the self-cherishing thought. “Today I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to recite my prayers or OM MANI PADME HUM. I feel too depressed.” Reading this verse helps you remember that you are doing it for all transmigratory beings, not just for yourself.

Rinpoche also suggests writing down verse 5.12 from Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara.

The one enemy you have is inside you—your mind, your anger. How you destroy this enemy is by practicing patience. By controlling the mind, everything else is controlled and you have no fear. The most important practice is to control your mind. Subduing one’s own mind is the teaching of Buddha, the essence of everything.

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For links to the transcript, translations, and more:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/the-most-important-practice-is-to-control-your-mind/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this teaching, recorded on August 11, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, by reminding us that we are so fortunate to have received a precious and perfect human rebirth. While it is precious, it is also fragile and can be ended at any time with death. In this precious life we have received teachings on how we should not harm any sentient being, and not just the ones we love and like to help, but including those we don’t like such as mice, rats, spiders, cockroaches, and mosquitoes. When mosquitoes come near your ears you become very concerned with the real I, which doesn’t even exist in mere name. This has been happening since beginningless rebirths. So much suffering, including all wars, comes from believing in the real I! Even spiders and ants suffer due to believing in the real I.

The pandemic and all of the disasters of the world are happening because of ignorance. This all comes from the mind. Therefore, you have to take care of the mind: don’t let it go berserk. If you don’t want to suffer, if you don’t want bad things in the world, if you don’t want problems with the environment, if you want to make a happy world, then take care of the mind.

Rinpoche shares several stories about how great bodhisattvas are able to manipulate the elements or perform actions that look like miracles. They are able to do this due to their minds. Whether you make the world more peaceful or not depends on your mind. Rinpoche also shares the story of how the young incarnation of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama said, “I’m the one who works for all beings” to the lama Keutsang Rinpoche when he came to check whether the four-year-old child recognized him. Rinpoche expressed being moved to tears when he heard that His Holiness had said that as a young child.

Rinpoche then discusses verses 5.4-5.5 of Bodhicharyavatara:

Tigers, lions, elephants, bears,

Snakes, and all enemies,

The guardians of hell beings,

Evil spirits, and likewise cannibals,

Are all fastened

By fastening only this mind.

They are all subdued

By subduing only this mind.

Rinpoche urges us to write these verses down in our prayer books so we will see them every day. Especially when we are angry or selfish, or when we have so much attachment. When we subdue our minds, everything is subdued. When we have control over our minds, we are free from fear. By controlling our minds and making them free from attachment and anger, from the self-cherishing thought, and from the ignorance holding the I as real when it’s not, then, all those who would otherwise harm us are subdued.

We produce all the suffering we experience with our mind, so the solution for problems, harm, enemies, and fear is to pacify the mind.

Verse 5.12cd of Bodhicharyavatara says:

If you subdue the mind of anger alone,

It is like you have subdued all your enemies.

And as Nagarjuna said:

If you kill your anger,

You kill all your enemies.

We have to learn this if we want to bring peace and happiness to the world. Otherwise, you just talk, talk, talk. Everything depends on whether you control your mind or not. Rinpoche translates verse 5.3 of Bodhicharyavatara as:

If you fasten the elephant of your mind

With the rope of remembrance all the time,

All fears will become nonexistent

And all virtues will come into your hands.

By subduing the mind, which is like a crazy elephant, you can achieve anything you want. Whether or not you experience samsara or nirvana, hell or enlightenment—this all depends on whether or not you control your mind.

Verse 5.17 of Bodhicharyavatara says:

If someone doesn’t know the supreme principal of the Dharma,

The secrecy of the mind,

Even if they wish to achieve happiness and destroy suffering,

They will wander in samsara without meaning.

and verse 5.18cd:

Except for conduct protecting the mind

What is the use of so many conducts?

Rinpoche explains that all the capacities of the mind are based on keeping the higher training of morality. He shares the story of how Lama Yeshe stopped a fire with his mind. He also shares a story about how Geshe Lama Konchog saved a child, who all the doctors said was going to die, by the power of his mind through doing puja. The West needs to learn that world peace comes from the mind, not from outside influence.

Discussing verses by Chen Nga Lodro Gyaltshen, Rinpoche says that when you don’t keep and protect your vows and your practice of morality, you will be criticized by all the buddhas, and your friends will scold you. You will even criticize yourself! But if you keep pure morality, all the buddhas will praise you and all of your prayers will succeed.

During the dedications, Rinpoche shares the story about a young buffalo he recently liberated and named Bodhichitta.

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For links to the transcript, translations, and other resources:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/dont-let-your-mind-go-berserk/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche continues his teachings for ordained Sangha, which are open to all who wish to benefit from his advice. He explains in this video, recorded on August 10, 2021, at Kopan Monastery in Nepal, that trying on being Sangha, like trying different foods hoping they bring you happiness, is not being real Sangha. You can enjoy wearing the robes and trying them on, but if it is just like a trip, your mind is not Sangha. If your mind is messy and not healthy, you easily give up your liberation and enlightenment.

Rinpoche then reminds us of the motivation for listening to the teachings. A perfect human rebirth—qualified by the eight freedoms and ten richnesses—is extremely rare, Rinpoche explains. It is not enough for ourselves to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. The real purpose of life is to not harm others and on the basis of that to benefit the numberless sentient beings and free them from the oceans of samsaric sufferings by oneself alone. We listen to the teachings to achieve this.

As Rinpoche explained in his recent teachings, by engaging in nonvirtue, you become habituated to it and do it again. By doing this, you make your future lives sooo difficult. You know that it’s bad, but you can’t stop doing it due to past habituation. In fact, much of your behavior is due to habituation with negative karma, and due to that habituation, it becomes more and more difficult to separate from negative karma. You think only of today’s happiness, not about future lives. Your wrong concept is cheating you, causing you to drown in an ocean of attachment and anger.

The coronavirus manifests in different ways according to one’s karma. Some people have some pain and sickness, some have no symptoms, and some die. Rinpoche discusses some of the different ways the virus has manifested in people he knows, and also the possibility that he had the virus himself just with very mild symptoms. When we meet with suffering, we don’t remember karma. We can even believe killing ourselves is the solution to the pain we are experiencing. When one is having emotional problems, spirits can also harm you. Rinpoche shares some examples of people who have been harmed by spirits.

Rinpoche then reads and gives commentary on the Sutra on Having Perfect Morality. (This starts at 50:19 in the video.)

Referencing Nagarjuna in Letter to a Friend, Rinpoche reminds us again that even great pain in the human realm is nothing compared to a small suffering in the hell realm, and the suffering has to be experienced until the negative karma finishes.

Rinpoche concludes by saying that Sangha are given unbelievable freedom by being able to purify twice a month with sojong, which is the monastics’ confession day. You should think that Guru Shakyamuni Buddha is reciting sojong for you. Because we can’t see Buddha in that aspect, he recites in the form of the abbot. You see the abbot reciting it, but you should know that it is actually Buddha reciting for the Sangha. Buddha is so kind. Unbelievable, most incredible.

For links to the transcript, translations, and more resources:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/by-the-force-of-habituation-you-uncontrollably-engage-in-nonvirtue-again/

Lama Zopa Rinpoche begins this video, recorded on August 6, 2021, at Kopan Monastery, reminding listeners that while this teaching is being given specifically for ordained Sangha, anyone is welcome to take the advice offered.

If you haven’t spent your life with a good heart and a positive mind, Rinpoche warns, and instead spend your life trying this and that until life finishes, then you will go to the lower realms. There are many wrong views available to you in this life. You have to check the quality of these views carefully, the same way you check the quality of clothing or food before you purchase it.

Rinpoche then recounts several stories, including about the building of Lama Yeshe's stupa at Tushita Meditation Centre, Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche, and Serkong Dorje Chang.

Rinpoche reminds us of the motivation for listening to the teachings—to free the numberless sentient beings from oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment by oneself alone. Therefore, you think of how you must achieve the state of omniscience to do that. Therefore, you are listening to the teachings.

Being attached to sex has not freed you from the oceans of samsaric suffering, Rinpoche observes. Since beginningless times, every sentient being has been one’s own husband, wife, children, and so forth. You have cheated yourself by thinking that the pleasures of this life that you experience are new. You believe you are meeting someone for the first time.

By learning Dharma, you can recognize right and wrong concepts. Usually in the world, any suffering is attributed to outside influences: animals, insects, other people. Rinpoche explains that this is from not knowing Dharma. Learning about Dharma is learning about your life, your mind, and your concepts. It is learning what is the right mind and what is the wrong mind, so you can stop having the wrong mind. Then you can have a healthy, beneficial, harmless, and right life, and have all the good things right up to perfect enlightenment.

You have been totally deceived by your attachment and wrong concepts since beginningless rebirths. Therefore, there is nothing to be attached to. It’s all a hallucination! Since there is nothing to be attached to, you should renounce samsara. Samsaric happiness is only suffering; this is the heart of Buddhism.

You experience suffering until your negative karma finishes, Rinpoche explains. Even great pain in the human realm is nothing compared to a small suffering in the hell realm.

Rinpoche then shares the four suffering results of sexual misconduct:

1. The Ripened-Aspect Result of Sexual Misconduct: This means a rebirth in the lower realms.

2. The Possessed Result of Sexual Misconduct: You are born as a human being but the environment is muddy, dirty, unhealthy, and has contagious diseases and viruses. Even if we just spend five minutes in a place like this, that is the result of past sexual misconduct.

3. Experiencing the Result Similar to the Cause of Sexual Misconduct: However you harmed others, you experience others doing this type of harm to you.

4. Creating the Cause Similar to the Result: This is done due to habituation with the past negative karma of sexual misconduct. Even if you think an action is bad, you do it uncontrollably. By engaging in nonvirtue, you become habituated to it, and do it again and again. This is the same for stealing, telling lies, killing—any negative behavior you're engaged in.

Even in lay life you can abandon sexual misconduct. There are five lay vows one can take to help abstain from negative actions such as sexual misconduct. In this teaching we are discussing the purpose to become Sangha.

Rinpoche then recites the Phagpa Chulung Rolpai Do Mantra: OṂ HANU PHASHA BHARA HE YE SVĀHĀ. He explains that each time you see this mantra, it purifies your negative karma, one hundred thousand eons!

Rinpoche also holds up the Buddha's Teachings on Our Lives card and explains that this is so important to have in a room in one’s home, even in the bathroom.

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We invite you to go deeper into the topics presented here, plus many others, by watching Rinpoche’s video and reading the full transcript of Rinpoche’s teaching.

Find links to the transcript, translations, and materials mentioned in this video:

https://fpmt.org/lama-zopa-rinpoche-news-and-advice/advice-from-lama-zopa-rinpoche/being-attached-to-sex-has-not-freed-you-from-the-oceans-of-samsaric-sufferings/